On Friday, my young writers and I had a Thank Goodness It’s Over party to celebrate our accomplishments during the month. The TGIO party is a well-established tradition for any NaNoWriMo group. I have always used it to showcase and celebrate each individual child’s writing.

We met at a family’s home, and each child had five minutes to read an excerpt from his or her story. I was impressed by the quality of the writing; three years of doing Nano for most of them has led to exceptional storytelling abilities in these young writers. During the reading part of the get-together, we had the usual stage fright issues, eventually overcome, and we had to practice being a good audience, also as usual.

The new experience was that one of the students had written a song and dance into his story, and he read us the description. His mother encouraged him to perform it for us, which he did. What followed was an expression of pure delight and joy as the boy rapped out a song and did a rhythmic, but hilarious, dance with it. We all laughed so much, along with him, that nobody managed to videotape the performance, but I did manage to snap a photo or two. That was an experience I will never forget.

After we all had a chance to read from our stories, we all enjoyed snacks, and the children played together. It was a perfect ending to a great program. The photo below is me with most of the participants (some couldn’t make it) holding their winner certificates.